UC San Diego – Software Studies Initiative – Lev Manovich

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San Diego, Jan. 9, 2009 — High-performance computing and the humanities are connecting at the University of California, San Diego – with a little matchmaking help from the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

The two agencies have awarded 330,000 hours of time on DOE supercomputers to UC San Diegos Software Studies Initiative (softwarestudies.com) to explore the full potential of cultural analytics in a project on Visualizing Patterns in Databases of Cultural Images and Video. The grant is one of three inaugural awards from a new Humanities High Performance Computing Program established jointly by DOE and NEH.

In this Video Professor Lev Manovich of the Department of Visual Arts at UC San Diego discusses his research and the award.

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Sh*t Fashion Girls Say (A Sh*t Girls Say Parody)

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OMG! P’TRIQUE MEETS REBECCA BLACK & MAN REPELLER!!

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The Overexposed City by Paul Virilio

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Definition of You

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Gunther Kress says, in his book Multimodality, that in a social-semiotic frame, multimodality can be seen as technologies of transcription. He says, “If image shows the world, then that is different from words in speech or writing telling the world. In that perspective, modes offer distinct ways of engaging with the world and distinctive ways of representing the world.” (Pg. 96, Par. 3). With this said, I’ve created a video composition where I have various languages of the world speaking a certain set of words (These words have come from a poem I’ve written entitled “Definition of You”). Not only have these words been verbally showcased, they were also accompanied by the text of the poem scrolling/flashing across the screen. In addition to the audible mode of the orated words, and the readable mode of the written words, the colors of the text and the black background were not chosen haphazardly. The color green is a significant color cue for the very person who has inspired the creation of this poem. The color black was used to represent the dark abyss and empty void in which they have chosen to live their life forever. Such color combinations help further add to the multimodal experience.

In Claire Lauer’s piece entitled Contending with Terms: “Multimodal” and “Multimedia” in the Academic and Public Spheres, she says, “Multimodal texts are characterized by the mixed logics brought together through the combination of modes such as images, text, color, etc.” (PDF Pg. 3, Par. 3). This combination of images, text, and color is exactly what I set out to do with this project. If the argument of the piece isn’t clear enough by reading the words within each poem, it’s simply a means of illustrating what Shakespeare said best: “To thine own self be true.”

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Language Acquisition 1

“The use of spoken language is unique to humans. Evidence suggests that our capacity for language is directed by our genes.”

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Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theory for language acquisition

“noam chomsky’s linguistic theory for language acquisition”

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From Data to Digital Art

Digital media artist Aaron Koblin shows off his animated visualizations of flight traffic mapping, text message usage and other illustrated projects, including an animated version of Thom Yorke’s face created for an open source Radiohead video.

What is Digital Media?

A digital media presentation by DMAF (Digital Media Alliance Florida) to the FMPTA (Florida Motion Picture & Television Association) produced by Liquid Digital.

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Visual Art and Social Structure: The Social Semiotics of Relational Art

This article elaborates the dialectical relationship between art forms and the social structures in which they are produced, by extending Robert Witkin’s taxonomy first presented in his 1995 book Art and Social Structure. Witkin tracked the history of visual art from pre-modern times, for which he invented the label invocational art, to the advent of Modernism, described in terms of evocational and then provocational art. This paper extrapolates Witkin’s model to include post-Modernism, for which the author’s term revocational art is coined, and it concludes with a discussion of Nicolas Bourriaud’s concept of Altermodernism, his term for describing the relationship between contemporary art practices and the social conditions of today, for which the author suggests the term convocational art, a synonym for Bourriaud’s term relational art. The paper concludes with a demonstration that social semiotic theory can be a powerful tool for the analysis of relational art. (By: Prof Howard Riley, Head of School of Research, Dynevor Centre for the Arts, Swansea Metropolitan University )

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Social Media Revolution

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Language as a Window into Human Nature

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In this new RSAnimate Steven Pinker shows us how the mind turns the finite building blocks of language into infinite meanings. Taken from the RSA’s free public events programme http://www.thersa.org/events.